Heather Moody didn’t retire her one-piece red, white and blue swimsuit as much as give it a regular place to stay.

After more than a decade of constant travel with USA Water Polo’s national and Olympic teams and on the pro circuit in Europe, she chose the stability of a nice home in Long Beach while transitioning to coaching.

Moody, the new assistant water polo coach at Long Beach State, purchased a home here four years ago when she retired from playing after the 2004 Olympics. She continued to move about the world as head coach in 2005 and an assistant the following three years on the USA Water Polo women’s program under Guy Baker, but that was preamble for this day, when she could put down some roots and let her feet finally touch the bottom of the pool.

“The travel wears on you,” Moody said Monday, the day her appointment was officially announced. “You would be gone for so long, and with my personality and my closeness to my family, it was time for me to be around home more.”

Home is Long Beach.

Her family is spread throughout the Mountain Time Zone, with her parents in her native Wyoming, her sister and three nieces in New Mexico and a brother coaching water polo at Colorado. But they’re all as close as a drive to Long Beach airport and a short flight.

“I was at the point where I was looking for an opportunity like this,” she said.

What the 49 ers gain is a two-time Olympic medalist with four years of coaching experience and all kinds of notable achievements in her career.

In 1996, Moody was a member of the San Diego State team that, in its first year of competition, finished third in the NCAA championships.

In 2000, she was a member of the first-ever U.S. Olympic women’s water polo team for the Sydney Olympics.

In the semifinals, she scored the game-winning goal, despite having her nose broken by a well-placed defensive elbow, to put the team into the gold-medal game. She played in the title game despite her injury, a heart-wrenching loss to Australia on a last-second goal.

In 2001, she became the first American to play professionally in Europe for the Voulagmeni team in Greece. In 2004, she was team captain for the Olympic team – “She’s the best captain I’ve ever had,” Baker, a former Long Beach State standout, said at the time – that was upset in the semifinals but rebounded around its captain to win a bronze.

“That was going to be the last time many of us were going to play together,” said Moody, who had already planned to retire. “There were a lot of tears over not making the final, but we needed at the time to regroup and end things the right way.”

Moody, 36, started her coaching career while still playing. She became an assistant at Golden West College in 2000 and has coached there on and off depending on her duties with the U.S. national and Olympic teams in the water or on the deck.

Her baptism to coaching the USA women’s team was sudden. She was an assistant on the 2005 team but was elevated to the head job when head coach Bill Barnett left the program over a contract dispute.

She led the team to the gold-medal game in the World Championships. Baker, who left to coach the men’s team for a year, returned to the women’s team as head coach in 2006 and Moody returned to being an assistant.

The Beijing Games were her third Olympics and first as a coach.

“She did a great job and she proved to everyone that didn’t believe in her or us,” said veteran Brenda Villa, who played in her third Olympics in Beijing.

“She was destined to become a coach,” then-U.S. team manager Michelle Pickering-Baker, Baker’s wife, said at the time. “Through the last three years of her career, she expressed her interest in coaching, and he used her very much as a coach in the water.”

“I was so busy that I didn’t have time to think about it,” Moody said. “It was a gift in disguise. My education in coaching came from being a player, and knowing the system and techniques from all of our past tournaments and workouts.

“There were areas that were foreign like going to the technical and coaches meetings. Guy knew that I knew what was going on, and he was still around to oversee both programs. He was a great sounding board, and I knew all of the other coaches, like Gavin Arroyo and Kyle Kopp.”

Arroyo, a two-time Olympian (1996 and 2000), is the current 49 ers head coach and has known Moody since they were playing in Greece.

Kopp, who also played in the ’96 and ’00 Olympics, is the former 49 er and Hall of Famer who has been an assistant on the women’s team since 2001 and is now the head coach at Golden West College.

Now she’s in Long Beach, where she joins the ever-

growing club of natives and locals who have contributed to U.S. Olympic water polo.

The 49 ers add a three-time Olympian to their roster. Moody adds, after years on the road, a permanent residence.